Paige and Randy = Get Engaged

Meet Paige and Randy!

Paige and Randy are getting married next month, and while I try to get some other photos edited today to share with you, I wanted to show you these two in the meantime.

Don't tell anyone, but I think they met on the i.n.t.e.r.n.e.t. *shhhh*.

Girls love boys, and girls do crazy things when they fall in love.... like pick up and move to another state for a boy. Holy cow, don't I know. Let's not get started on that one.

Boys do crazy things too sometimes. Like Gene's middle son. How do you think he ended up married to a canadian anyway? And Gene didn't land in Maryville because of magic fairy dust ;)

ANYWAY... these two are giggly and sweet.
I think they like each other a little bit.

I love when my couples have a unique hobby like being in a band, bow hunting or rodeo. It always makes me want to go out and watch this new hobby when you see others talk about it with passion.

These two, they like mud runs, and I'm sorry, but no matter how you slice it, mud runs sound like fun.

It's a pretty dirty hobby tho.

I'm game. Think my neon will do? I'm shopping for a jeep, will that make me socially accepted in your circle Randy and Paige?? lol

{editing inspired by photo by Ryan Brenizer. Thanks Ryan, you rock as always!}

I'm really looking forward to this wedding. Crossing my fingers for some beautiful fall leaves. See you guys soon!!

*barkbarkbarkbarkbark*

I saw this scene this morning, and thought, "thread the needle" (one trail right through another) and decided to grab my camera.

Now if you've read this blog for more than 3 days, you'll know that I am for some reason obsessed with planes. If I were a Jack Russell terrier, I'd be out in my yard barking at the sky like *all. the. time.*

It started when we moved out here in Small Sky Country (like big sky country only smaller. duh). When the sky is so large, you notice things.

Since I was outside, with a camera, I happened to notice how pretty the light was and I got distracted by some flowers (weeds) and spent some of my morning photographing dewey leaves and flowers.

A few minutes later I hear another plane.
*barkbarkbarkbarkbark*

Going the same direction as the first 2. The same path.
Interesting.


{Tangent: Reviewing these photos is where I realized that I had a monsterous chunk of something on my camera sensor. Look outtttttttt the alien is going to eat you!! FTR, it's now clean.}


Three minutes later..
I hear another plane (upper right).
*barkbarkbarkbarkbark*


Same path, same direction. All flying so low I can see the color of their tail. Very interesting.

In the end, I noticed all the trails, leading the same way. I'm dying to know where they are going, as KCI is straight south of me, and there's nothing west that would require the low flight, which is where they are all headed.
*barkbarkbarkbarkbark*


I have to get to the bottom of this, and I'm just the crazy broad to do it. It might involve me flying somewhere east tho, then coming home and having a conversation with the pilot.

I'm hoping I don't get arrested.

This is what they see when they fly over. See that dot, next to the line? That's me!
Hi planes!! I'm waving at you!

*barkbarkbarkbarkbark*

*singing* good morning, good MORNING, it's GREAT to be alive!*

I spotted one of these elusive creatures today. Have you seen one? They are amazing. Sometimes they are known as a s.u.n.r.i.s.e.

Pretty full of awesomeness eh?

Yes, I admit it with pride, I'm a night owl. I've seen a thousand beautiful sunsets and 4 amazing sunrises. OK, maybe 6 sunrises.

My philosophy on sleeping is this, if I can't sleep, I'm not gonna just lay there staring out into the darkness. I get up and do something like read a magazine, surf the net, or edit pictures... or all of the above.

My ex and I had an ongoing argument about this issue. He thought I should go to bed when he did until I fell asleep (rarely worked). But instead I did the above. I sometimes got the impression he thought I was lazy as I would get up at around 9 a.m. yet he'd be up at 6 a.m. However, I would go to bed around 2 a.m., and him around 9 p.m., so doing the math here, I was getting about 7 hours sleep and him 9 hours.

Math wasn't really his strong suit.

When I lived in town, there would be those mornings I would shuffle myself to the bathroom for my 7 a.m. potty break, only to be greeted with that noise.

What the hell is that noise?

Ugh.

It's the marching band. Practicing half way across town. Man I feel sorry for those kids having to get up so early. Damn I feel sorry for those parents that have to take them.

Ha.
Ha.

I'm going back to bed.

Neener neener

*KARMA kicks me in the arse!*

So now I have a freshman.
Who can't drive.
Who's marching in the band.

Damn you karma!!

So far I've been lucky... you see I broke my foot. Damn lucky foot.
Gene has been taking him in the mornings so that I could rest and prepare for long wedding weekends. But today, I guess Gene didn't feel like trudging to town ... again. I could no longer deny that it's *my turn*.

So I ended up seeing that fiery ball of gas (no I'm not talking about the man in my life) rise and greet me. (stupid sun). I also got to see a ton of fog, a couple critters and lots of traffic. What the heck is everyone doing up so early? Oh.. work?

Yeah whatever.
*snoooore*

You need to be hella impressed

It doesn't look like much. In fact, it's probably hard to figure out what you're even looking at at all!

What you are looking at, is the granite on my desk, and the black trim that we're putting on the edge. It's oak, that has been stained black. For the record, staining oak black is a lot more difficult than you might expect! There's an ebony stain out there, that accomplishes little more than a really deep brown.

Google is my friend. Friends call me to google for them. This is true.
If you don't want me to know something, make sure it never makes it to google!

Having said that, I found all kinds of ways to stain oak a deep black color. There's the good old way. Paint. But I figured if I was going to do that, I'd just put crappy pine up there. I wanna see that wood grain that I paid 10 times the price of pine for!

Then someone suggested rusty nails in a jar full of vinegar.

Really? Well let me find those rusty nails I was saving for something important first.
-sarcasm-

So that's out of the question. As I don't have the patience, faith, or a jar of rusty nails.

The third and simplest suggestion was India ink. Score! Fast forward a few days, and you'll find Gene and I, both in line at Michael's with a coupon in hand and each a tiny bottle of India ink.

Surprisingly, a tiny bottle will do many boards. Awesome.

Anyway, so last weekend, we were working on the island, when we got stuck. You see, we bought some high gloss black granite, which for the record, you can NOT cut face side down. (hard to mark black granite). So we had 2 pieces with scratches on the face. We only had ONE piece spare.

The high school geometry came out in me, and somehow I figured out how to recut the tiles to work.

Then I marked the tile wrong and I still had a big scratch right next to the sink
*head desk*. -insert existential meltdown here-
Gene wanted to leave it as it was as you could only see it from 7 out of 8 angles.
Lana wanted to strangle Gene for such a suggestion and succumbed to the idea that I'd be looking at it every day for the next 15 years.

Lana won.

Since that tiny 4 x 12" piece held up the whole process, we moved on to cutting some trim. Something you should know, is this is something NEITHER of us has done before. Something else you should know is oak trim with India ink stain, etc etc, isn't cheap. OK, It cost a lot less than a new liver, but a lot more than say, a super awesome pair of flip flops.

(can you tell I really miss my flip flops?? Right now I just sound like ... flip *thump* flip *thump* - I have one more week with this boot).

Anyway, so we dragged out the compound miter saw that I got for Christmas 2 years ago. yep. and last year I got an air nailer for trim. I'm trying to decide what to ask for this year for Christmas.... I'm thinking an upright belt sander.

Very carefully we cut the trim to maximize the pieces with the least amount of waste, and we rocked that saw! We ended up with literally 3 pieces left, all under 1 foot long each. The desk has an odd little triangle pieced corner. I guess we did it to not look so harsh, but I knew when we did it, it was going to be a major pain in the butt to cut the trim.

But it wasn't! The pieces were so tight that the fit and held themselves in place without glue.

Damn we rock.

So in the end, we did it! One more thing we can say we'd never done before, but with patience, accomplished. Don't be scared... just try. They're only power tools that can cut off your hand. (just ask our friend Bobby... aka... stumpy).

Meet Kade

You should meet Kade. This is how he looks ALL THE TIME! Tons of smiles, and Daddy can make him *laugh* really big. Taking his picture was EASY!

I got an opportunity to try out my new (old) baby doll carriage that I got for a whopping $16.50 antique shopping. FYI, we saw a similar one this weekend not as cute for $240!!

Sweet feet of Kade and his brother and sister. They were all really cute kids!

Dad is a John Deere guy. Can you tell?

I also finally found a little guy to put into my giant teacup. He just barely fit. He also seized the opportunity to chew on his toes.

Bet ya can't do that when you're 40 Kade.

No, in fact I down right guarantee it.






And my absolute favorite of the session:

Selective coloring does not make you popular in some photography circles but I DON'T CARE! I so much love how cute this photo is. It wasn't my favorite when I started (It's grainy so I totally ran with the grainy theme and made it more grainy lol), now I love how those eyes just pop.

Thanks for being such a good boy Kade. You can come live with me any time you want. Well, as long s you are smiley and sweet, then it's back to mom. :p